Valley charity ships medical supplies to Cameroon

TEMPE, Ariz. — Volunteers in a Tempe warehouse are spending the days before Christmas getting ready to ship a 40-foot container of much-needed medical supplies and equipment to a Central African country.

Project C.U.R.E. (Commission on Urgent Relief and Equipment) is sending hundreds of boxes of gloves, syringes, dressings, bandages and more to the International Community Reference Healthcare Complex in Buea, Cameroon. In addition to those supplies, it’s also sending 12 hospital beds and an X-ray machine.

“We collect donated medical supplies and equipment from valley hospitals, then we take those supplies and equipment and ship it to developing countries,” said Project C.U.R.E. executive director Melissa Gable.

Project C.U.R.E. has already sent donated medical supplies and equipment to 15 countries this year.

“It is actually going to a healthcare center that is brand new,” said Gable of the supplies’ Cameroon destination. “It has 43 beds, but those 43 beds are going to serve 200,000 people.”

Because of U.S. regulations, the hospitals would have been unable to use the goods here.

“A lot of what you see is stuff that maybe the hospitals have overstocked, or that they’ve opened a box and they can’t reuse anything,” said Gable.

Project C.U.R.E. has provided assistance to people in more than 120 countries since it began in the 1980s.